Lay Down Your Head
by Marguerite1
Summary: SoTU challenge for songfic, but I can't do happy to save my life. J/D, CJ/T, S/Ainsley, one surprise couple. Not slash, not explicit.


  
**Lay Down Your Head**

Classification/Summary: Answer to Jori and Michele's State of   
the Union Challenge for (this is killin' me, here) smutty songfic. 

Disclaimer: This wouldn't happen on the show unless it got   
picked up by cable, making the story way too far off the   
canonic mark for anyone to be upset about. 

The song is "Lay Down Your Head" by Jeanne Tesori and Brian   
Crawley, copyright 1996 & 1998 by That's Music to My Ears,   
LTD (ASCAP) and Bayfield Music (BMI), used with admiration   
but without permission. The performance I'm hearing in my   
head is by Audra McDonald from the album "How Glory Goes,"   
Nonesuch 79580-2, copyright 2000 Nonesuch Records and WEA   
International. 

Anyway. 

Thank you, Ryo, for your beta, your patience, and your love   
of He Who Is The Hot. 

*** 

Lay down your head and sleep, sleep.   
I'll be your pillow, soft and deep.   
Leave me your troubles, I will keep   
Your days gone by, your days gone by.   


She was perceptive. She knew what he thought of her in times   
of crisis. He saw her as a little lost creature, someone he   
could wrap up and defend in those rare moments of absolute   
chivalry, someone who would praise him, encourage him, in   
this antique endeavor. 

Except that he had appeared on her doorstep, dripping with   
rainwater, watching with his mouth open as she answered the   
door with a towel around her shoulders and a cup of tea in   
her hand. So it had been unclear from the start who was   
going to save whom. 

Donna shifted a little. Their bodies made an elongated "s"   
in her bed. Josh's head was in the valley of her waist, her   
legs against his chest, his arms wrapped warm and tight   
around her thighs. 

She let had him in without a word, her sad, sad mouth   
finally remembering how to smile while he shook himself off   
like a wet setter. "You disappeared after the speech." 

"It was crazy in there. We weren't with the motorcade so we   
got swept out with the press," she had answered, handing him   
the towel and the tea before padding back into the kitchen   
to pour another cup that she could keep for herself this   
time. "Put your coat on the back of a chair, not the sofa,   
and take your shoes off before you catch pneumonia." 

"It's a virus, you don't get pneumonia from cold feet." 

His feet were too far away to test for coldness now, but she   
warmed her toes between his thighs. He grumbled something in   
his sleep and pressed his cheek against her hip. She stroked   
his hair, still wet from the rain or perhaps the   
perspiration from their activity. 

"What wind blew you hither?" she had asked once she got   
settled with her own tea and made sure her robe was securely   
tied. 

"That's nice, Donna. Shakespeare in the middle of a storm." 

"You haven't answered my question." 

Josh had opened his mouth and closed it a couple of times,   
running his hand over the back of his head and making a   
disorderly cluster of waves out of his wet hair. "I...we   
thought he...we didn't know..." He shook his head. "I asked   
CJ to pinch me when he said it - I thought I was dreaming." 

"Did she?" 

"Damn straight. I think she bruised me." 

She had laughed then, the unexpected and unfamiliar sound   
filling the room and making Josh smile. It was worth it, to   
see his smile. "So you're drunk and you're here to yell at   
Rachel's cats?" 

"No. Surprisingly, I'm sober." 

"I thought you'd all go to the place." 

"Nope. I puttered around for a few minutes but I'm wired. I   
couldn't work. I needed..." 

His eyes were soft, vulnerable, with rain darkening his   
eyelashes and highlighting the planes of his face. 

"What, Josh?" 

It was beyond crazy, watching the rapid rise and fall of his   
chest as he struggled for words. She had the power to stop   
this, to make it all better with a quip, but she didn't want   
to. Instead she had let him step forward, wrap her in his   
arms, and press her head to his shoulder with a strong hand. 

She had let him hold her because it was something he needed,   
something that could give him stability and a sense of   
control in a world spinning on an insane axis. It had   
started out safe, familial, not anything that could be held   
against them. But it had progressed with Josh's hands under   
Donna's robe and her leg pressed against his growing   
hardness, and now they were asleep in her bed. Definitely   
something that could be held against them. 

She hated sleeping on her side, found it uncomfortable and   
unbalanced. But tonight wasn't for sleeping; she'd have the   
rest of her life for that. Tonight was for watching Josh as   
blue-silver moonlight touched his face. 

His face had been lovely, she remembered, when he had tipped   
up her chin and given her a soft kiss. Each kiss had been   
different, moving from tentative to comforting to frantic,   
and she had felt grateful that rain fell from his hair onto   
her face to cover her tears. He'd leapt backwards, one hand   
tracing an unknown, tremulous pattern in the air while with   
the other he had touched his fingertips to his mouth. 

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. God, Donna, I'm such an asshole, I   
didn't...I can't begin to..." 

"Josh." She had needed to stop the flood of words before   
they both drowned. Never taking her eyes from his, she had   
opened her arms and given herself eagerly to their mutual   
downfall. 

Fallen now, a vine wrapped around a rose, they lay in a   
whirlwind of mussed sheets and tangled limbs. She could   
still feel him inside her, still remember every inch of his   
flesh as he joined himself to her, like phantom pain turned   
somehow joyous. He'd never let go of her hands, always   
keeping his fingers threaded through hers, even when he had   
shouted her name to the heavens as his essence filled her.   
Shouted her name, and the forbidden words, and then repeated   
them so softly that she had been certain it was a   
lust-induced hallucination. 

But he'd asked her to tell him the same thing, when his   
fingers were dancing over her oversensitized flesh, when she   
held his head to her breast and let him feel the hummingbird   
wings of her heartbeat. "Please, Donna," he had entreated,   
and she let the words slide out of her as easily as he had   
slid into her. And when she had come, once, twice, a third   
time, she told him again. 

He was at rest, finally, finally, after their breathing had   
slowed and their faces had flushed with embarrassment and   
remembered yearning, and he'd made some mumbled promises   
he'd never be able to keep, but she knew he'd believed them   
when he said them. 

She felt the tickle of his eyelashes against her waist.   
Looking down, she saw his eyes, large and luminous and   
afraid. "It's okay, Josh. Go back to sleep." 

Whatever he saw in her expression seemed to reassure him. He   
said something into her flesh, something that made her smile   
while tears fell like an unexpected summer storm. 

*** 

Lay down your head and dream, dream.   
You're so much gentler than you seem.   
Is there a chance you might redeem   
My days gone by, my days gone by?   


Screw pretext. 

They'd long since given up on trying to justify this, and CJ   
didn't have time in her schedule for anything that wasn't   
straightforward. Anything that wasn't exactly what it was.   
They didn't need drinks or conversation or subliminal   
signals, not after a friendship that had spanned a   
continent, fifteen years, a marriage, a divorce, and a   
presidential campaign. It had also spanned his private   
breakdown, the one no one knew about but her, the one where   
he woke up every night for three months covered in sweat,   
screaming that it was blood. 

Not after that. They could just look at one another at the   
end of a particularly Godawful day - and they had plenty of   
those, especially now - and end up in a sweating, panting   
pile of body parts. 

No, there was more to it than that, CJ, thought as Toby   
nuzzled her breast in post-coital semiconsciousness. For a   
man who lived and died by the words he wrote for the rest of   
the world, Toby had a peculiar inability to express himself   
except with his ungainly body. She'd seen him rip into a   
speech that Sam had spent days perfecting, watching Sam   
withdraw like a whipped puppy, but the moment Toby touched   
Sam's arm to indicate something he liked, Sam's morose   
expression would be replaced with sudden, sunny joy.   
Personally, she'd have kicked his ass for that kind of   
treatment, but in some part of Sam's complicated psyche he   
seemed to need frequent dressings-down, perhaps to   
compensate for the youthful privilege that he wore like an   
albatross around his neck. 

And what did she, Claudia Jean Cregg, White House Press   
Secretary and the Penultimate Person to Know, need? 

She'd made it clear to Toby. Touch me here. Harder. Harder.   
I won't break. 

Even after fifteen years and God knew how many frantic   
nights, his tenderness came as surprise. Sometimes she   
suspected that she was barking sexual orders at him to see   
if he'd finally snap. But he never did. More of a gentleman   
in bed than out of it, he always bore his weight on his own   
arms, always kept his beard from leaving marks on her neck   
or thighs, always managed, by sheer force of intractable   
will, to have her crying out to him or God or both before   
he'd allow his own release. 

It had driven her especially crazy tonight. "Just once,   
Toby, couldya just be a caveman?" she'd asked, still panting   
from one of the orgasms that had rippled through her while   
he waited and watched with those dark, unreadable eyes. 

"I'm too nice?" he'd asked, trying without success to hide   
his smile in his beard while thrusting deep into her.   
"You're telling me I'm too nice?" 

"Yeah, I know, it probably never happens." 

"Not too much, no." He'd rested his forehead on her   
collarbone, sighing, and watched himself slipping in and out   
of her, something that had always seemed to fascinate him.   
Thinking about that always made her eyes fill. 

She turned her head and rubbed her damp cheek against the   
pillow. Her back ached from where she'd strained upwards,   
taunting him, trying to get him to lose control. All for   
nothing. Well, not nothing, because Toby reached around and   
rubbed the tight muscles, his touch expert and soothing.   
"You're tense," he whispered into the long curve of her   
neck. 

"It was a tense kind of day." She hooked a thumb under his   
jaw, making him come up for a kiss that tasted like scotch   
and cigars and despair and everything else that made him   
Toby. 

His eyes were topaz in the muted light. "I'm sorry you're   
tense, CJ," he murmured. "I'm sorry about all of it, I   
really am." 

"We've been over this and over this..." 

"Yeah. I know. But it doesn't make it suck any less." 

She smiled and kissed him again, this time with her heart in   
it. "He's running, Toby. He's going to finish this job.   
That's more important than the order of being told, or even   
who told us." It wasn't entirely true; some part of her   
would always resent the hell out of hearing it from Leo when   
everyone else had been granted an audience with the   
President. 

And Toby knew that. "Leo feels like crap about how it went   
down." 

"Yeah, well, he can take a number." She shook her head,   
feeling the ends of her hair catching in Toby's beard. "I   
don't want to talk about this. Not now." She tightened her   
embrace, moaning as Toby's hands roamed the length of her   
body. 

"So what do you want to do?" he asked, and she could see the   
way his smile, the mischievous, cunning one, lit up his   
entire face. 

"Oh, this and that." She stretched, holding on to the   
headboard for leverage as she felt all her vertebrae align. 

"This?" His finger made a tight circle in the wet curls   
between her thighs. 

She arched into his hand. Damn the backache, Toby was too   
good to waste. "This," she agreed, her voice coming from   
somewhere deep and dark and dangerous. 

"How about...that?" he asked, soberly regarding her as he   
began kissing his way down her torso. 

"Oh, definitely...that." Toby's mouth, that could wound in   
so many ways in his day-to-day conversation, had an entirely   
different function when it was against her, pulling her out   
of her thoughts until all she knew was that her blood hadn't   
been anywhere near her brain for too long. His scalp was   
smooth and warm beneath her fingers as she stroked it. He   
hummed something that was a little like opera and a little   
like pain, his tongue darting around, not sharp but soft and   
smooth and wet. 

She heard herself whimpering and didn't care. 

He did that thing with his tongue, something she didn't   
think was technically possible and was probably illegal in   
some southern states, and she screamed his name as the room   
whirled and grew dark except for the sparkles behind her   
closed eyelids. 

"I love it when you do that." He sounded like fifteen   
different kinds of smug, smug on a level that even Josh   
could only dream about. 

Toby folded his arms over CJ's belly and rested his chin   
there, watching her wind down. He adjusted his body enough   
so that he could plant a noisy kiss in her navel, then   
resumed his quiet vigil. 

"How you doin' down there?" CJ asked, her voice more than a   
little raw. 

"I'll take an IOU." 

It was his code phrase, something he said rather than admit   
that his middle-aged body wasn't going to cooperate the way   
it had when they were twentysomething and could make love   
until their flesh was the color of sunrise. She found it   
peculiarly endearing, like the man himself. 

"C'mere, then," she whispered, and he obliged by scaling her   
long body until he could lie on his back and put her head on   
his chest. She draped her leg over him because she knew he   
liked it, and because his body was warm and comforting. 

"I suspected that he was sick, Toby." 

"Ssh, ssh." He kissed her temple, then tucked her head back   
under his chin. "None of that matters. None of it." 

"The Grand Jury will..." 

"The Grand Jury can kiss my ass, CJ." He held her a little   
more tightly, enough to make her feel secure and balanced. 

"I'd like to see that." 

His heartbeat was slowing, the thumping gentle and regular.   
He kissed her again. "CJ?" he asked in a voice thick with   
sleep. 

"Yeah?" 

"I won't let you fall." 

*** 

And oh, his breath is so warm.   
Mine is short, and my ears are ringing.   
Everywhere, my skin is singing.   


There wasn't a mirror in this miserable, dank room in the   
bowels of the White House, but there was one window,   
probably meant for coal delivery in some bygone era, and she   
could see their reflection in it. The colors were wrenched   
from the palette by a night that didn't so much fall as   
collapse, so instead of gold and ebony she only saw her   
light hair brushing her shoulder, and his dark head   
contrasted against it. 

It would look like something from a bad movie if someone   
were to walk into her office right now. It would look like   
two staff members in flagrante, too stupid even to close the   
door much less lock it. But the funny part - if you   
absolutely had to find something funny in the midst of what   
she'd learned, along with the rest of the world, in the last   
few hours - was that they'd simply fallen asleep in each   
other's arms. 

Fully dressed, no less, except for Ainsley's right shoe,   
which lay just out of reach of her questing toes. 

Sam had lurched into her office looking as if death would've   
been preferable to whatever state of mind he was in. Ainsley   
had opened her mouth to rip him to shreds over the whole MS   
disaster, to tell him in no uncertain terms how much legal,   
ethical, and moral trouble he was in and that she wanted no   
part of it, ever. But before she'd had the chance to say any   
of it, he had just stumbled over to her and thrown himself   
into her arms. 

She'd patted his back, tentatively at first, then rubbing in   
circles like she would if he were a cranky baby needing to   
be soothed. That image didn't last long, especially when   
he'd begun kissing the base of her throat, working his way   
upwards to her mouth. "Sam," she'd tried to say, but it came   
out as a moan as she found herself inspecting his impossibly   
even teeth with her tongue. 

"Ainsley," he'd whispered, kissing each eyelid with lips   
almost too soft to be entirely masculine. "This is stupid. I   
should go." 

His hair had been blue-black with rain, drops still clinging   
to his finely-boned face, and the pads of his fingers were   
slightly shriveled against the firm, soft skin of her   
cheeks. 

"Don't go, Sam," she had said, her drawl putting three   
syllables into his simple, honest name. "It hurts me, too." 

He'd slid downward, ending up on his knees with his face   
pressed against her stomach, and when she cupped his face it   
was so, so cold. His breath, oddly, had been fever-hot, and   
she had wondered if she should call a doctor. The only   
doctor she had been able to think of was the First Lady, who   
probably wouldn't be a doctor much longer if Ainsley's party   
had anything to say about it, and that had made her sad   
enough to lean over and let tears slip down her face and   
fall into Sam's sodden hair. 

The new moisture had gotten his attention. "Ah, don't,   
Ainsley, I'm sorry." 

"Shut up, Sam." 

So they had ended up in her one comfortable chair with her   
on his lap, kissing with sweet innocence until Sam's body   
succumbed to depression and sleep deprivation and he had   
relaxed, leaving her to absorb the chill of his body and   
rework it into living warmth. 

The man she served was in deep trouble. Her friends were   
probably toasting each other right now, placing bets on who   
would take Josiah Bartlet for a ride in the next election.   
God only knew what Toby was thinking right now, and she   
didn't want to imagine the kind of days Josh was going to be   
putting in, trying to make the disclosure of this horrible   
disease work in the President's favor. She didn't envy CJ   
the onerous task of putting a good public face on what   
should, really, have been a private sorrow. 

And Sam. Poor, sweet, misguided Sam, who'd put his faith in   
greatness only to have it crumble at his feet, what would he   
do? 

She didn't know, but as she felt his body becoming warm and   
pliant in her arms, she knew that she wouldn't leave him to   
do it alone.   


*** 

Lay down your head and sleep, sleep.   
I will be pleased your soul to keep.   
Give yourself over to the deep   
Of days gone by, of days gone by.   


Her weight alone hadn't been enough to make the old bed   
creak, but the addition of his body, slim as it was, too   
slim for her peace of mind, made the familiar wooden   
chirping. She heard him laughing above her even as he kept   
up the pace of his thrusts. "It's nice...not to have...to   
worry about that..." he groaned, and she kissed him in   
response. 

It had been so long, so long. As gentle as he was, it was   
still uncomfortable, and familiar as he was, it was still a   
little foreign. But oh, to feel the concentration in his   
limbs as he worked his way in and out of her body, to see   
the gleam in his eyes that had never dimmed in all these   
years. She would endure fifty times fifty, fifty times a   
thousand, just to have him joined to her like this. 

"Am I hurting you?" he asked in that tender, concerned   
voice, and she didn't have the heart to say yes because then   
he would stop, and the world would stop, and her heart would   
stop. 

"No, no. It's just been a while, you know?" 

"Yeah, I know." He changed the angle a little and it didn't   
chafe as much, although she still cursed the curious ravages   
of time that left her mind in one state and her body in   
another. But this new angle was nice, more than nice, and   
with relief she began to feel a cushion of moisture between   
their bodies. 

"Ah, there we go." He smiled down at her, obviously proud of   
himself, and she smiled back as she tightened around him. "I   
love it when you do that," he whispered, kissing her again   
and again. 

"I'll keep that in mind." She knew every shudder, every   
moan, as familiar to her as her own, and she knew that he   
was going somewhere without her and she wanted to be with   
him. Never taking her gaze from his face, she trailed one   
hand down her body to just above the place where they were   
joined. 

He stopped, staring open-mouthed at her. "This is new," he   
said, not angry, just puzzled and a little lost. 

"I've had some practice in the last year or so," was her   
reply. "You're fine, I just...I just..." She thought she was   
beyond blushing, but evidently that was one function her   
aging body decided to leave in place. 

His kiss was ferocious, stronger than the ones he'd rained   
on her face after she had phoned him and asked him to come   
over. "I think I like it," he said softly as her muscles   
began to flutter. "Oh, yeah, I like it a lot." 

"Good, because I like it too." 

It felt so good to laugh with him. They hadn't laughed   
together in so long, since before any of this had happened,   
and certainly not in those rare instances when they'd made   
time for sex. She was still laughing when something else   
bubbled up inside of her, making her arch upwards and cry   
out his name. 

He didn't last, of course he didn't, not after that, and   
certainly not after all this time. She was glad when he   
shuddered above her, silent and intense, and gave her the   
kind of kiss he only bestowed in the few moments between   
orgasm and slumber. She couldn't bring herself to resent the   
way his body just melted into sleep - especially not after   
she'd seen him, worn and pale and frightened, on the evening   
news, and had picked up the phone before considering what   
dangerous territory she was exploring. 

She rearranged him a little, turning him onto his side and   
spooning behind him, putting one hand on his belly and the   
other in his soft hair. No more combat, no more   
recrimination, no more self-inflicted pain. For tonight, for   
as long as he needed her, they could be just the way it had   
been. And it had been good all those years ago, before fame   
and prestige and duty had eaten away at them. It would be   
good again, now that they knew they should just be   
themselves. 

Just Leo and Jenny. 

***   
END   
*** 

Feedback is almost as hot as Josh. :) - marguerite@swbell.net.   
Back to West Wing fiction.   
  



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